A surgeon performing an orthopedic procedure is met with a variety of obstacles due to the limited visibility and access to a diseased anatomical region of interest. Often, surgeons will rely on computer-aided or robot-guided systems to help them more intuitively plan for the surgical procedures at hand. Computer-aided systems generally enable surgeons to graphically model an anatomical region using medical images, such as computer tomography (CT) scans, and the like. Once a plan or model is generated, the surgeon may then view the model on a display screen in the operating room as guidance while performing the actual tasks. Such computer-aided systems have become a valuable tool in the operating room, especially in applications involving anatomical regions that are particularly difficult to access, where the surgeon must often rely solely or mostly on the graphical models for guidance.
Much of the reliability of computer-aided surgical systems rests upon the means by which it is first configured or calibrated for accuracy. Prior to implementation, it is common to register certain geometric features of a particular anatomic region or structure to a graphical representation or model of the structure for display and manipulation by a user. The registration process helps synchronize the actual geometry of the anatomical structure, as well its spatial position and/or orientation of the structure relative to the surgical environment, with the modeled structure. Although such registration steps help improve the accuracy of the model, any subsequent change, offset or shift to the pose of the actual structure that may be untracked by the computer-aided system can compound errors during a surgical task.
Accordingly, there is a need for improved systems or methods that provide facilitated means for verifying a spatial registration of an anatomical region of interest prior to or during a surgical procedure. In particular, there is a need for a system or method that can improve the reliability of computer-aided surgical procedures by enabling more accurate and more consistent modeling of an anatomical region throughout the surgical process.